Economic migrants tramp into town, weary and malnourished. Their clothes are ragged and ill-fitting and their shoes worn out and letting in water. Is this a scene from the poorer parts of Eastern Europe or even Africa? Remarkably, such deprivation was found amongst the ranks of the unemployed from Wales, who walked to Sussex in the 1930s in the hope of finding work.

In his new book, Through the Hard Times and the Good, an oral and social history of Worthing, historian Chris Hare, documents how a tireless band of volunteers sought to alleviate the distress caused by the Great Depression and formed the Worthing Council of Social Service. From modest beginnings, this organisation rose to become Guild Care, one of the South of England’s largest and most respected charities.

More than a decade before the creation of the National Health Service and the Welfare State, Worthing’s Council of Social Service were organising free dental checks, free school meals, and free legal advice for the unemployed and those on low incomes. There was even a scheme to provide free or subsidised shoes and boots for those in need.

The book describes the huge impact of the Second World War, and how, despite the pain and heartache of those years, conditions for the poor steadily improved. Supplementary Old Age Pensions and Family Benefits, introduced in 1940 did much to remove the stain of poverty that marred even Sussex towns. Unemployment, that remained high throughout the 1930s, reaching record levels in Worthing during the winter of 1938/ 39, had been virtually eradicated locally by 1941.

After the war, the Council of Social Services faced new challenges. The Welfare State had solved many of the old problems, but new ones came in their place. By the early 1960s, the population of England was ageing markedly and no where more so than Worthing, where one third of the population was over the age of retirement. Bexhill came a distant second, with 22%. To put this in perspective, in 2009, 23% of the population of the UK were over 65, by 2040 it will be 33% - the level Worthing reached eighty years earlier! It is for this reason that the Council of Social Service – now Guild Care became a specialist in providing services for older people, offering social activities in day centres as well as residential care.

What was considered ‘elderly’ even fifty years ago, would be seen today as no age at all, a point brought home forcibly by Margaret Halland, one of the local residents quoted by Mr. Hare in his book: “Everyone looked much older than people do these days. I look at myself sometimes and think, ‘Gosh, I’m 63 and what mum looked like when she was 43’, but then look what she’d been through. She’d had a poverty stricken childhood and been through two world wars, so you can’t expect them to look the same, can you?”